So it appears that we might finally know what form this hardware will take. Eurogamer are claiming a number of sources have revealed to them that the system will be a handheld first which will then connect to the TV for play at home. The system will be cartridge based with power provided by the Tegra mobile chip that Nvidia make.

I certainly didn't see the priorities being this way around, so far everything seemed to point towards a home console that you could then take on the move. I suppose though that this way around you get around the issue of games looking worse on the move or having a really expensive system which can do both or a system split into two parts.

Going with cartridges feels like a mistake. Presumably they'll charge the same for the physical cartridge as they do for a digital version, so digital players will be effectively subsidising the cartridge ones.

Raid wrote:Going with cartridges feels like a mistake. Presumably they'll charge the same for the physical cartridge as they do for a digital version, so digital players will be effectively subsidising the cartridge ones.

If it's portable it has to be cartridges really, discs just wouldn't work.

Right now all PS4 and Xbox digital games are the same price as retail products so I don't really see the issue. Oh and when they say carts, they probably mean SD cards of some description.

I suppose you're probably right. I was thinking along the lines of installing games onto the system from a disc media, where the drive is in the base unit, but then realised that home consoles use cheaper magnetic drives rather than SSDs for bulk storage, and having one of those in a handheld would be almost as bad as the disc drive in the first place.

My issue is the cartridge price. Blu-ray discs are cheap to produce, cartridges with memory chips aren't. To match a Blu-ray's capacity, you'd need cartridges 5 times the size of the largest 3DS ones. That cost has to be passed on to the consumer. Given how well Nintendo games hold their value, this will likely mean that this is going to be a really expensive console to own.

Well the report claims 32gb will be the size of the carts so maybe we wont see anything bigger than that? A 32 GB SD card is around £13 so wont cost Nintendo much to mass produce. Or do we see a situation where there are games sold that work on the base unit, which has extra storage, but don't work on the portable unit maybe?

My only real worry right now is that we no longer see the types of games Nintendo makes for consoles. Handheld games are designed differently due to a number of factors such as being on the move so you want shorter burst of gameplay and less screen real-estate. They could get round this by having two types of games, ones for the home and ones for on the go, but that could confuse tha market and after the 3DS and Wii U I'm not sure I trust Nintendo to get the marketing right on something like that.

One thing I will say though is I hope Nintendo go big on indie titles as it would be great to play all the top indy games anywhere and also Nintendo titles.

Yeah it's good to finally have some idea of what the hardware will be, but a 'Preview Trailer' is a weird way of announcing the product. I would have thought they would do a proper Nintendo Direct on it first.

DjchunKfunK wrote:Yeah it's good to finally have some idea of what the hardware will be, but a 'Preview Trailer' is a weird way of announcing the product. I would have thought they would do a proper Nintendo Direct on it first.

My guess is it'll be a trailer for the Direct more than anything.

Who wants to place bets on the chance of actually seeing the hardware today?